


Get It All Back

by Nanyoky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Changing Tenses, Codependency, Freeform, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Not A Fix-It, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, POV Sam Wilson, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Resurrection, Sad, but not in a fun way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-26 18:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9915059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/pseuds/Nanyoky
Summary: "And it sounds like a joke, someone clawing their way out of their grave like some made for TV Halloween movie. But he was shaking something terrible and wouldn't stop asking for Wanda."Pietro comes back, but it's been awhile and contrary to what the twins always thought, the world still spun while they were apart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have two speeds: ridiculous stupid comedy, or angst just for the sake of hurting so good. I tried my hand at a tense shift and I"m not sure I'm happy with the results. *shrug* It's more an experimental piece to break me out of the rut I"ve been in. Enjoy!

He was back. No one knew how or why. But one night there was a knock on Sam's door at his place in DC (they buried him in Arlington because it seemed respectful and Wanda was in no condition to give input.) Sam didn't know him but all of a sudden there was a man covered in dirt in a suit that clearly wasn't made for him with bloody fingernails on his doorstep. And it sounded like a joke- people clawing their way out of their own grave like a Halloween made for TV movie- but he was shaking something terrible and wouldn't stop asking for Wanda. 

It was a long time before Sam could get him to sit. He moved a lot. A lot more than anyone had a right to move. He said he was Wanda's brother and Sam almost decided to be angry. That wasn't funny. Wanda had been a wreck when they met. It was weeks before she spoke and longer before she looked anyone in the eye when she did. The first time she smiled in front of him, she cried immediately after, guilty and hating herself for letting herself have a moment of happiness that her twin didn’t. Saying all that was for nothing was the worst practical joke he'd ever heard.

But the man's eyes were haunted. Haunted and ghostly at the same time. Like both victim and tormentor. Predator and prey. Like no one had ever told him he had to pick just one.

 

_“I need my sister.”_

 

So Sam reheated some pasta and made sure the stranger started eating before stepping out into the hall to call Steve. He used a low voice but he was sure it was impossible not to hear in the small house.

Says he's Maximoff don't care who he really is he's not okay won't stop shaking see him for yourself don't tell her

Steve arrived while the stranger was in the shower. He was in there awhile, in fact. Sam tried not to think about how he'd just mopped the bathroom. He came out wearing some of Sam's clothes and Sam thought he still looked bizarre enough to be a hallucination, even cleaned of graveyard dirt. He pulled up a smile that shook just like his hands.

Steve asked him all kinds of questions- what was the first thing I said to you both in Wakanda, what's Wanda's middle name, what was your father making for dinner when he died, what did I say over comms before the fight; "you two can still walk away from this," Rozalia, paprikash with chicken and mushrooms, "if you get killed, walk it off"- but didn't seem convinced until he drew himself up and shouted at captain fascist to bring him his sister or he'd find her himself- wherever they were keeping her. Steve finally smiled and shook his head in disbelief and Sam never even know the guy but he feels relief wash over him at the haughtiness and indignation that laces his face and voice because he could tell that shivering and staring at the floor is not who this guy is supposed to be. He thought it was because he knew Wanda- knew how she could look sweet as a cover girl one second then spit piss and vinegar the next- knew how the two of them wouldn't have made it through childhood on the streets by being nice. He didn't think either of them were supposed to be nice. He thought they were supposed to survive.

 

_“I need my sister, but she does not need me.”_

 

So maybe that's what happened. All the bitterness in Pietro Maximoff kept pumping when all the blood spilled out. "To damn salty to die," Clint says and it's like watching him get ten years back when he sees the kid breathing and glaring and almost frothing in rage that they won't let him see his twin. Sam thinks those ten years got tacked on just seeing him die in the first place so it's only right he's got them back now. He seems more ready to say it's Pietro--of course it is no one could fake that ugly mug that annoying voice that grating personality--than any of the others. He quit over the whole thing after all. Heroes don't retire they get spooked or they die. Pietro died and it spooked Clint enough to send him home and now they were both back and no one knew how to tell Wanda.

  
_"I need my sister, but she does not need me."_

_“That’s not true.”_

  
She screams. Later Steve says it's just as bad as when she felt him die. She screams like an animal that can't help itself and Pietro rushes to catch her as she falls to her knees. They speak some language no one understands and Sam thinks it's not Sokovian but one of those twin things that sound like a joke until you know twins and it's anything but funny. She screams at him until she touches his chest and she stops so suddenly it's almost worse. Her eyes are round and flat and red and the glow makes the tears on her face look like blood. They don't say anything else to each other but she grabs onto him and they kneel in the floor with their arms wrapped around each other until probably long after the others leave to give them a moment.

Sam breaks three fingers punching the wall outside Arlington on his way back from visiting Riley.

 

_“Do you know what my first thought was?”_

  
Pietro dying changed them both and it's agony to watch them realize it. Sam knows he's not supposed to be this nervous, this hunted and quiet. And he's starting to realize Wanda is not meant to be so kind so gentle and so careful with her words and deeds. It's like they're both waiting for the other to fall back first- or like they're both struggling to, and scared at how they can't. Wanda spends more time with others. Pietro spends more time alone.

It’s like Steve and Barnes, but worse. The two old soldiers were friends, not halves of one another. But Sam is tired. He’s tired of Gods and monsters and miracles. He’s tired of watching everyone but him get back what they’d lost in a way they didn’t know if they wanted. He wants to shake them all until they stop looking so martyred. He wants to scream at them that he would take Riley back in an instant, even if he was a murderer, an addict or just a spirit possessing an old boot. It’s not fair and he knows how it sounds- like he’s the only kid on the block with no new bike- but it doesn’t make it right. None of it is right and he’s too furious to let his empathy for them take over.

 

_“Do you know what my first thought was? When I saw the blood, and knew it was mine?”_

 

Sam watches them and hates every moment of it. When they are together, they speak to one another in their own language, but it’s still obvious they’re fighting. Pietro sits close to her and fills every silence with words. Wanda can barely look at him. And it only makes Pietro try harder.

Sam finds him, drinking alone on the roof one night. If he didn’t already know Steve, he would have called an ambulance.

“It’s not-“ Pietro slurs a bit- apparently the near sixty bottles were enough. “I’m not trying to- it takes a lot.”

Sam understands the missing phrases between. “It’s not enough to do any real damage, I’m not trying to die.” He’s sitting on the edge of the roof though, feet dangling down over the concrete below. Sam thinks he should get him to come back from the edge, but doesn’t say anything.

“I know. Steve’s got the same problem.” He sits next to the younger man and grabs one of the few beers left unopened. “Drink as fast as you do everything else, huh?”

He gives one of those nose laughs that seem the only kind he’s capable of. Sam wonders if he laughed much before. He wonders that a lot, about both of them. About how much of the parts of them he knows were always there and which they just picked up since Pietro died.

“Not really- was up here awhile already.”

Sam nods and looks out across the compound to the trees. He thinks this is wrong. He can almost see how they were meant to be. I was supposed to be Wanda sitting up here with him, drinking and probably talking smack about the rest of them. Or maybe they wouldn’t even stay here with the rest of them. It’s like Pietro can read his thoughts even better than his twin.

“I need my sister, but she doesn't need me.”

“That’s not true.”

“No.” Another hallow nose laugh. “You know what my first thought was? I saw the blood. Saw it was mine and I thought: ‘Wanda will be so, _so_ angry with me.’” He shakes his head and his smile is like that feeling when you remember something that ruins a good mood. “Angry. Can you imagine? Even then I knew she could live without me.” He snaps off another cap and in an instant, throws the empty bottle out into the trees. “And me? I could not even _die_ without her. Now I have lost her both sides of existence, what do I do.” It isn’t a question, more like a curse. Like the way people mutter “oh my god” under their breath. “What do I do.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say. It doesn’t feel like a conversation so much as a testimony. An account of his witnessing the tragedy of their life together, his death, and their lives apart.

“It was _Gehinnom_.” His voice is quieter now, but still a little slurred. “I rejected the lesson. For her. To come back to her. I failed.”

“You can’t fail hell, Pietro.”

“Shows how much you know.”

It’s supposed to sound like a joke except that it isn’t and they both know it. They drink in silence for a good long while. Sam tries to think of something to say that will make it all different. He knows there isn’t anything, but he still tries. Tries to think of a way to say Pietro’s death broke his sister, and that had to mean something. To think of how to say ‘it’s too late to die again, it won’t mean as much this time, not to you or to her.’ There wasn’t a good way to say ‘I would trade you for the one I lost in a second.’ So they don’t say anything, and when the door behind them clicks, Pietro is gone.

Wanda steps up to Sam’s side and it’s like he’s borrowed her abilities for just the moment because he can tell she knows. Her hands shake. There are small noises in her throat fighting to get out. Her eyes are already red-rimmed like she’d known for hours.

“How- how could-“

“You let him go first.”

She barely holds herself together as he turns back to the door, but he hears the scream once he’s a flight down. He wonders if Pietro is far enough away yet, but doubts it. Sam tries to think of the places he might plan on going, and wonders if they are the same ones Wanda thinks about now.


End file.
